In Advance of Failure Foreseen
/John Updike once affably damned James Agee as a wasted talent who failed to cultivate his craft. Liza Birnbaum replies with a defense of the glories of Agee's ragged, heartfelt work.
Read MoreEndless Forms Most Brutal
/As Ridley Scott's "Prometheus" takes movie-goers back to the world of his "Alien" classics, we take a look at the long and lively history of modern cinema's most famous monsters.
Read MoreThe Dangers of Failing to Lesnerize
/Dubbed the Voltaire of science fiction, Robert Sheckley often denied that there was anything serious in his fabulations. But a new collection belies the claim, displaying inventive satire mixed with wisdom
Read MoreSecond Glance: The Conrad Connection
/This picaresque classic by Colombian novelist Álvaro Mutis doubles as an extended valentine to the author of Heart of Darkness. Robert Latona revisits it.
Read MoreAll the World to Nothing
/The real mystery of Richard III is not the fate of his nephews, the Princes in the Tower, but why we never tire of telling and re-telling his story. What do we really see when we stare at his enigmatic portrait?
Read MoreAffliction Fiction
/Brian Evenson's work is a violent exploration of a violent medium: language. His new novel Immobility and the stories collected in Windeye continue that journey into dark territory.
Read MoreGhost Town Apostle
/Ken Layne's political writing is sharp and raucus, and a novel about a financially devastated near-future United States would seem like a perfect vehicle for more anger. But though that fire is still there, a gentle-but-compelling spiritualist tone has risen to to the fore.
Read MoreA Rasp in the Air
/A thumping mix-tape of dystopian fantasy and gangster noir, Kevin Barry's City of Bohane defies easy categorization--but does it offer a story to match its stylistic bravura?
Read MoreInto the Breach: Battle Royale and Hunger Games
/The box office record-setting movie adaptation of Suzanne Collins' The Hunger Games is the latest incarnation of an unsettling children-as-prey plot that's been with us in one form or another for a long time - and never more vividly than in Koushun Takami's Battle Royale
Read MoreMaking the List
/Long-time critic John Sutherland's latest book The Lives of the Novelists takes readers on a biographical tour of 294 creators' lives. But does it work? Long-time critic Steve Donoghue and novelist John Cotter try to figure that out.
Read MoreHumanitarian Disaster Romance
/In The Orphan Master's Son, Adam Johnson evokes the brutality of North Korea's authoritarian regime by way of an over-the-top love story. Joyce W. Lee investigates whether torture and romance can coexist in one novel.
Read MoreCato of the Antipodes
/Of his 60+ books, one in particular, The United States, is best representative of his work as a whole and, by readers, best loved. On the Collected Essays of Gore Vidal.
Read MoreShore to Shore
/For two generations, the great American critic and man of letters Edmund Wilson has been instructing and delighting his readers - and inspiring some of them to become critics themselves.
Read MoreA Fine Romance
/Is there more to romance fiction than perfect people meeting cute and living happily ever after? Sarah Wendell thinks so, but her arguments in defense of this most reviled of genres may themselves sell it short.
Read MoreFalling for the Big Con
/This new novel has all the grit, violence, and hopelessness we expect of the noir sub-genre, but here it's infused with an almost philosophical edge.
Read MoreCrowd Control to Major Tom
/Tom McCarthy's Derrida-inspired linguistic and narrative fixations are once again on full display in Men in Space, his first novel now reissued after the popularity of Remainder and C
Read MoreLooking for Laura
/She's a shadow, an absence, that haunts the letters, diaries, and novels of her famous half-sister Virginia Woolf. What can we really know about Laura Stephen?
Read MoreRadical Acceptance
/Ayad Akhtar's debut novel American Dervish describes joins a Pakistani-American boy's coming-of-age story with the exploration of a Muslim family's assimilation into picket-fenced suburbs. What traditions will be kept or compromised? And more importantly, how well does the author present his vision?
Read MoreCoterminous
/If anything's taboo in our society it's a thoughtful, humanistic portrait of a terrorist, which is why more established writers failed where Jarett Kobek delivers something new.
Read MoreDevil Twins
/Is Don DeLillo's short game as good as his long? Is it better? His first collection of short fiction -- or is it his first? -- offers occasion to take the much-lauded writer's measure.
Read More
